1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to electronic commerce and finds particular application in matching requirements of an originator to a potential supplier.
2. Related Art
The Internet is a multimedia computer communications network built on worldwide telephone and data networks. Over 100,000 servers of various types are connected to the Internet providing a publicly accessible distributed data store. A server holding files of information as data accessible using an Internet communication protocol called the “HyperText Transfer Protocol” (HTTP) is known as an “HTTP server”. Data files stored on HTTP servers and accessible by means of HTTP are known as “web pages” which together form the “World Wide Web”, or simply the “WEB”. Web pages are written using a special WEB language called HyperText Markup Language (HTML) creating links to other pages on the WEB, as appropriate, and providing a means to navigate through information on the WEB. Information held on the WEB and intended for public access is accessible to anyone having a computer connected to the Internet and with an interest in accessing such information. Access to certain information may be restricted by means of closed user groups for example. An HTTP Uniform Resource Locator (URL) has been adopted as a WEB standard to provide a consistent international naming convention to uniquely identify the location of any WEB resource, including for instance documents, programs, sound and video clips. The HTTP enables URL-identified files (web pages) to be located and transferred for reproduction at user equipment connected to the Internet. Underlying transport protocols, primarily TCP/IP, enable network connections to be established between an Internet user and a point of access to the Internet made available, typically, by an Internet service provider. Anyone may register with a local Internet service provider to gain access to the Internet communications infrastructure and to be allocated a unique Internet network address. Internet service providers may also lease server capacity to enable a registered user to establish their own “site” on the Internet, identifiable by a unique URL, to store their own WEB pages and make them available to other Internet users. Commercial Internet users may provide and maintain their own servers for this purpose.
Internet users may access information on the WEB using proprietary WEB browser products running on personal computers (PCs) or workstations linked to the Internet. WEB browsers communicate with WEB resources using standard Internet protocols to download selected web pages, interpret embedded HTML commands inserted at the time of mark-up by web page authors and, if appropriate, display those pages graphically. Browsers are available to reproduce multi-media files transferred over the Internet.
It is known for a produce supplier to establish their own “site” on the Internet and to provide a “storefront” user interface allowing prospective buyers with Internet access to browse the supplier's product range. In some cases a buyer may specify their product requirements using a template provided at the supplier's user interface and, in response, product choices may be reported from the supplier's product range, specifically matching the user's stated requirements. However, the flexibility provided in such cases is limited, particularly in the specification of requirements. A buyer must also identify and visit other product supplier Internet sites separately, each site having a different user interface, to examine alternative products meeting a given requirements specification.
It is also known for a third party Internet user to provide a managed front end to a community of product or information suppliers of a given type. A prospective buyer, for example, may specify their product requirements using a template provided by a user interface to the third party managed front end and automatically trigger a search of each community product supplier's database for matching products. A buyer may then order a product from a selected supplier using the same managed front end. For example, managed front ends currently available on the Internet include, for books, that provided at http://amazon.com/ and, for cars, that offered by “Auto-By-Tel” at http://www.auto-by-tel.com/. However, managed front ends tend to relate to a particular product type only and cover a limited range of suppliers. Often, a managed front end may offer access to a range of suppliers having complementary product ranges, with less competition on price between those suppliers than may be available outside. To find a more competitively priced product a buyer may need to locate and visit alternative product supplier sites individually.
It is also known to provide an Internet search engine arranged to interrogate a local database of collated product information and report the Internet location of a specified item of information. The more efficient a search algorithm and the larger the local database, the more accurate may be the results obtained. However, it is difficult to provide a user interface to satisfy the needs of all users in searching for product information, a fact emphasised by the myriad of search engines currently available. Even having found a number of promising suppliers from the search results, the user must still visit each site individually. Better known suppliers tend to stand out from such a search more than small or medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and users tend to be attracted to well-known names.
International patent application PCT/US96/19509 describes a targetted advertising system wherein user requests for information, such as those submitted over the Internet, are intercepted by the advertising system. The system analyses the user request and, by means of predetermined rules linking merchant advertising material, to particular categories of user request, a relevant category of advertising material is selected from a store of such material and inserted within or provided along with intercepted pages of information being returned in response to the user request.